Oh well. We have a mid table budget, and will finish mid table. A few too many players who don't care enough. Winnall, Kelly and Lee very poor all season, I don't care their past achievements.
Our season has been buggered in the middle of the pitch. Started the season with Gorrin injured. When he is close to coming back we lose CamBran for 4 months. Cam comes back and McGuane is out for the season. CamBran starts to recapture form and Gorrin goes out injured. All the while Kelly never looked better than a lower L1 side at best. In the end we were left with having to use players who are number 10s or wingers in CM (Sykes, Henry and Lee) and it caused us to consistently lose the midfield battle. I want to see LCP starting the rest of the season and Lee, Kelly, Grayson all going back to their clubs never to wear yellow again.
At the end of the day, with our budget and our injury problems this season, coupled with our awful start, to be challenging for the playoff right up until the last 7 games isn't a bad season; it only hurts more because it did for a few weeks look like we had a shot at the playoffs again. It also cannot be understated just how heavily this season has been affected by Covid; firstly because of the ridiculous number of cancelled games that weren't our fault that created that huge log after Xmas, and secondly because we have a ridiculous financial burden that most other teams don't remotely have to worry about in our stadium situation, made far worse by the fact we had no fans to help fund that this season.
Calling for KR's head after everything that's happened since he came in seems preposterous to me. He has stuck by us when Tiger was hitting the wall financially time and again, he's built a level of community support that we've not seen in decades, and he cares about the club, past, present and future, more than any manager we've had for decades. I understand why people are pissed off that Winnall came on before Agyei, but let's not try and act like we've got Kemar Roofe chilling on the bench and KR is bringing on Agon Mehmeti over him; Winnall was brought on so we could go long ball a bit more because he's stronger in the air than Agyei. On paper it makes sense, but in reality Winnall (and Ageyi too) has a habit of fouling his man and Accrington played the ref well.
If next season we get these rich Indonesian's come in and buff our budget way up and KR is still simmering outside the playoffs I can see an argument, but I don't think he's underachieving given all of the circumstances against us. Is he perfect? Hell no. But he really f*****g cares and is a decent L1 manager, the exact opposite of the man he replaced. Get rid of him now, and we could just as easily end up with another Pep who puts us back several years in development again, just like Mr Clotet did when he came in.
